Stars: Glenn Ford, Jack Lemmon, Anna Kashfi, Brian Donlevy, Dick York, Victor Manuel Mendoza

Summary: Tom Reece arrives in Chicago after spending months on the range. After losing his money in a poker game he lends over three thousand dollars from a hotel clerk called Frank Harris, who wants a part of Tom's cattle business. Together the men set off on a cattle drive.

When hardened trail boss Tom Reece (Glenn Ford) loses all of his money in a poker game, hotel clerk Frank Harris (Jack Lemmon) offers a $3,800 loan in exchange for a piece of Reece's cattle business. As a result, Frank decides to leave his humdrum desk job and go on a cattle drive from Chicago to the Rio Grande, encountering such events as an Indian ambush and a stampede along the way. This beautifully panoramic Delmer Daves Western is based on true events from the life of Frank Harris.

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A sad, melancholy ache pervades Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's haunting, moving film that, like his other movies, explores societal constraints and the passions that lurk underneath. This time, however, instead of taking on ancient China, 19th-century England, or '70s suburbia, Lee uses the tableau of the American West in the early '60s to show how two lovers are bound by their expected roles, how they rebel against them, and the repercussions for each of doing so--but the romance here is between two men. Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) are two itinerant ranchers looking for work in Wyoming when they meet and embark on a summer sheepherding job in the shadow of titular Brokeback Mountain. The taciturn Ennis, uncommunicative in the extreme, finds himself opening up around the gregarious Jack, and the two form a bond that surprisingly catches fire one cold night out in the wilderness. Separating at the end of the summer, each goes on to marry and have children, but a reunion years later proves that, if anything, their passion for each other has grown significantly. And while Jack harbours dreams of a life together, the tight-lipped Ennis is unable to bring himself to even consider something so revolutionary.

Its open, unforced depiction of love between two men made Brokebackan instant cultural touchstone, for both good and bad, as it was tagged derisively as the "gay cowboy movie," but also heralded as a breakthrough for mainstream cinema. Amidst all the hoopla of various agendas, though, was a quiet, heartbreaking love story that was both of its time and universal--it was the quintessential tale of star-crossed lovers, but grounded in an ever-changing America that promised both hope and despair. Adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's short story, the movie echoes the sparse bleakness of McMurtry's The Last Picture Showwith its fading of the once-glorious West; but with Lee at the helm, it also resembles The Ice Storm, as it showed the ripple effects of a singular event over a number of people. As always, Lee's work with actors is unparalleled, as he elicits graceful, nuanced performances from Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway as the wives affected overtly and subliminally by their husbands' affair, and Gyllenhaal brings surprising dimensions to a character that could have easily just been a puppy dog of a boy. It's Ledger, however, who's the breakthrough in the film, and his portrait of an emotionally repressed man both undone and liberated by his feelings is mesmerizing and devastating. Spare in style but rich with emotion, Brokeback Mountainearns its place as a classic modern love story. --Mark Englehart

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Subtitles:	Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1958
Release Date:	May 27, 2002
Runtime:	88 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C D R 18814
Keywords:	Cowboy, Wide, Screen, Westerns
Genre:	Westerns